Fascinating Leeds have played the same three opponents as Spurs and have the exact same record of two wins, one draw with seven goals for and three against. They are ahead of Tottenham in the table purely based on their alphabetical order.
And Koulibaly got sent off to boot. Tuchel looked as much a twat as he did last week with his stupid cap.
Liverpool looked quite ordinary, Diaz excepted. They will be fine but they caught united on a day when they had something to prove.
Lampard, who admits taking a calculated risk when signing Alli on deadline day in January, said: “I do have great empathy for the trajectory of his career in a sense because it is clear to see. I don’t have to dress that up in any way. “Having worked closely with him for a period I have to say he really does need to understand the relation of training and focus to what that means to performance at the highest level. It’s not just the Dele story, I would say that to any player because it’s the only thing I know. I wasn’t a saint, but I know what training can do and focus can do, and that’s something he really has to take on board. If he can, it can be not just a great thing for him but for the teammates around him in the squad. He’s at that point. That is the test for him now.” Alli will have a year remaining on his Everton contract should Besiktas decline options to sign him for £6m before 1 January or £8m after that until June. Lampard believes Alli’s elite-level career will be in jeopardy without a change of attitude. “He has to do it. Every player has to do it. This sport is too elite at the top end. If you want to be in that bracket, or be influential at a club like Everton or Tottenham, or anywhere. It is just too elite. Every player has to have a version of what is best for them and what gets the most out of them. Not every player will do the amount of training that a certain player does, but the focus has to be there and if you don’t have it, it is really, really tough.”
Arsenal showing a surprising amount of backbone. Loathe them as I do they had a very good summer and a brilliant start. Albeit against some less testing opponents. We’ll see how Europa league affects them, but right with Liverpool, Chelsea, City and United dropping points they’ve got a decent enough start to aim for top four.
Scott Parker sacked, most likely for undermining his boss and his players, saying in most post-match interviews that they weren't good enough and needed investment for better players. They're a very small club so I don't know what he was expecting. Sean Dyche would be a good fit there.
A little gamesmanship from Saints - St. Mary's looked more like the Dell in the 1980s with a pitch that looked like a cow pasture.
Always wanted to go to the Dell - a funky parallelogram of a stadium with funky light standards on an Archibald Leitch stand. It was there when I first started going over, but like countless others, gone before I could get to it. That and the Baseball Ground at Derby are my big misses. ... and about a dozen others, now that I think about it. I won't bore folks further.
We can always go down Memory Lane! One of my favourite Spurs games, a 6-2 extra-time win at the Dell in an FA Cup replay back in 1995 featuring a Ronnie Rosenthal hattrick. I was living in France at the time and can remember listening to it on a scratchy BBC feed.
Somebody had to sign him - Serge Aurier will now be making foul throws and giving away penalties for Nottingham Forest.